A Look At BDM History

Attention history buffs, Black Diamond Mines Regional Reserve holds rich history spanning throughout the 1700, 1800, and 1900s and gives a good look into a bit of California history.  Native Americans inhabited the Bay Area for thousands of years including the Chupcan, Volvon, and Ompin tribes who spoke the Bay Miwok language.  These tribes lived in the Antioch, Pittsburgh, and Concord, California area and did so until Spanish, Mexican, and American settlers arrived, changing the way of life in 1772.

With new settlers came a new means of living.  Beginning in the 1860s coal mining encompassed the livelihood of five towns, harvesting almost four million tons of coal from the earth, industrializing California.  In the 1920s sand mining began and was used in glass making by the Hazel-Atlas Glass Company in Oakland, as well as the Columbia Steel Works with foundry sand.  Altogether more than 1.8 million tons of sand had been mined out of BDM by the time the mines closed in 1949.